(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gear train of an automatic transmission for a vehicle and more specifically a gear train with eight forward speeds.
(b) Description of the Related Art
A typical shift mechanism of an automatic transmission utilizes a combination of a plurality of planetary gear sets. A gear train of such an automatic transmission that includes the plurality of planetary gear sets changes rotating speed and torque received from a torque converter of the automatic transmission, and accordingly changes and transmits the changed torque to an output shaft.
It is well known that when a transmission realizes a greater number of shift speeds, speed ratios of the transmission can be more optimally designed and therefore a vehicle can have better fuel mileage and better performance. For that reason, an automatic transmission that enables more shift speeds is under constant investigation.
In addition, with the same number of speeds, features of a gear train such as durability, efficiency in power transmission, and size depend a lot on the layout of combined planetary gear sets. Therefore, designs for a combining structure of a gear train are also under constant investigation.
A manual transmission that has too many speeds causes inconvenience of excessively frequent shifting operations by the driver. Therefore, the positive features of more shift-speeds are more important for automatic transmissions because an automatic transmission automatically controls shifting operations basically without needing manual operation.
In addition to various developments regarding four and five speed gear trains, gear trains of automatic transmissions realizing six forward speeds and one reverse speed have been introduced, and also, gear trains realizing more number of speeds are under investigation.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.